Tuesday, October 4, 2022

A Time to Regroup

 Hello, cousins!

After the publication of the Callin Family History and John H. Callin's War Poems this spring, I decided to give myself a break from project-focused research. I've still been active, as you can see by my WikiTree edit history, but rather than pushing to reach an end goal, I've been tugging stray threads and exploring rabbit holes. 

Now I'd like to refocus and figure out which branches of my tree need the most attention, and which branches you are all most interested in.

To help with that, I made a list of each ancestor in my tree that represents a "peak" in my research - they aren't necessarily "brick walls," but they are as far back as I've gone using a thorough, evidence-based approach. My goal for each name in this list is to identify that person's parents and siblings and document them as thoroughly as possible with records, obituaries, and whatever stories or artifacts may have been passed down.

I've grouped them based on which of my four grandparents' lines of ancestry they fall into, so if you already know who our common ancestor is, that should help you figure out which Project you will be most interested in. Then, I give the link to that individual's WikiTree profile, and to their page in my publicly-available Ancestry tree.

If you'd like to jump in and help, or if you just have questions, you can use the contact form on the right side of this page to let me know. I'd love to hear from you!

The Robert Callin Project

These are ancestors of my Grandpa Bob:

Elizabeth (Berlin) Callin: my 3rd great-grandmother

William Walker: my 3rd great-grandfather

Lydia (Bowen) Walker: William's wife, my 3rd great-grandmother

Solomon Bollman: my 4th great-grandfather

Eleanor (Waters) Bollman: my 4th great-grandmother

Thomas B Hale: my 3rd great-grandfather

The Nancy Witter Project

These are ancestors of my Grandma Nancy:

Adam Piper Witter: my 3rd great-grandfather

Hannah Jane (Tice) Witter: Adam's wife, my 3rd great-grandmother 

Nancy Ellen (Shriver) Witter: my 2nd great-grandmother

Albert Crydler Huff: my 2nd great-grandfather

Rosa Edith (Murray) Huff: Albert's wife, my 2nd great-grandmother

The Russell Clark Project

These are ancestors of my Grandpa Russ:

Joel Clark: my 2nd great-grandfather


Sarah Jane (Bellamy) Clark: Joel's wife, my 2nd great-grandmother

James Thomas Reynolds: my 2nd great-grandfather

Mary Frances (May) Reynolds: James's wife, my 2nd great-grandmother

The Alberta Tuttle Project

These are ancestors of my Grandma Alberta:

Edmund Tuttle: my 3rd great-grandfather
Josephine Avena (Plumsted) Tuttle: Edmund's wife, my 3rd great-grandmother
Florence Mabel (Hart) Tuttle: my 2nd great-grandmother
Emil Carl Frey: my 2nd great-grandfather
Jacob Edward Opp: my 3rd great-grandfather
Mary Elizabeth (Palmer) Opp: Jacob's wife, my 3rd great-grandmother





Saturday, August 6, 2022

Since the Book Came Out

 Hello, cousins!

You may have noticed that this blog has been quiet since the big Book project wrapped up. I figured I could take a break from regular blog updates and let the last post (with links to purchase the books) stand for a while. My wife and I also bought our house in March, so I've been keeping pretty busy with domestic projects.

We did receive some sad news from our cousins in Florida this week. Glenn Ray Callin lost his battle with cancer on 2 Aug 2022. Glenn was my 1st cousin, 2x removed, and 1st cousin of my grandfather, Bob Callin. Glenn may have been the last living member of his generation - there is one more cousin descended from John H Callin (the author of the book of Civil War poetry) I have not been able to track down.

Last month, we also lost a cousin from the Cowan family - Wiley Davis Cowan, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II and a former American envoy to the UN based in San Francisco, who died a few days after falling in his San Francisco apartment. Born on 11 Jan 1926, he died at San Francisco General Hospital on 11 Jun 2022 at 96 years 5 months of age.

I did not have a lot of information about Wiley in my tree, as his father, James Wiley Cowan, was in that last generation I had worked on for the Callin Family History. Wiley's neighbor, concerned that the building manager was not making an effort to find Wiley's next of kin, found my tree on Ancestry, and I was able to track down and contact his niece, Nancy, whose mother is Wiley's older sister. His sister is 99 and lives with her daughter only half an hour away from Wiley's apartment. Despite being so close, the family had apparently been estranged for 50 years, and they had no idea he was living nearby.

As always, let me know if you have questions or suggestions - the contact form on this page goes straight to my email!


Monday, March 28, 2022

The Books Are Online!

 As of right now, there are three books that you can buy from Lulu.com - when you buy one, they print it and ship it straight to you.

First is the big one:

The Callin Family History

This is the one I've been working on for the last several years - it has a BLUE cover with a portrait of the family of George W. Callin (restored and colorized by Claudia D'Souza, the Photo Alchemist). 

It is only available in Hardcover, and he comes in at over 750 pages of pure family history. 









War Poems

This has been my secret side-project for much of the past year. My aunt Vicki inherited a book of poetry written by her great-grandfather, John Henry Callin, and she and I collaborated on transcribing it and editing it for publication.

I figure people who aren't directly related to the Callin family might enjoy this one.


link to War Poems by John H. Callin - they will ask you to verify your age due to "explicit content"; that's mainly because there are some grisly descriptions in a couple of the poems.


The Callin Family History - 1911

This is a replica of the original Callin Family History published by George W. Callin in 1911. It has a RED cover and is much, much smaller than my Big Blue update. If you'd like a copy of this one, you can get it in either paperback or hardcover:


link to the Paperback version

link to the Hardcover version

Friday, March 11, 2022

The Book Is On The Way!

 I finally did it - it has been nearly seven years since I published the replica of the original Callin Family History and decided that my next Big Project should be to publish an updated version. And now, I'm waiting for the author proof to come in the mail so I can release the "final" product!

He is a chunky boi.

The Callin Family History (2020 Revision) clocks in at 762 pages, and documents James Callin and 1336 of his descendants. Due to its size and a rise in publishing costs over the last couple of years, the list price is going to be about $50 - but on the bright side, there is no way you will lose it in the bottom of your bag!

This book only tracks the first six generations of descendants, which feels a little incomplete (I'm in the eighth generation, so I didn't make the final 1336), but that also made it easier to reckon with the ethical implications of publishing information about living people. Only two of the 1337 individuals with biographies in this book are still with us - and one of them (Hi, Glenn!) is as eager to see the book as I am.

There are, unfortunately, no pictures - again, the legal and technical problems that go along with publishing other peoples' photos were too much for me to deal with, and photos would have pushed the final page count well over the 800-page limit I was working within. If any of you would like to work together on publishing a smaller/narrower section of the family tree with pictures, that might be worth discussing over on the Callin Family History Facebook group.

 MEANWHILE,

If you simply can't wait to start digging into the text, I've begun adding the research (with source citations!) that make up this book to WikiTree - if you start with the page for James Callin and click the "Descendants" button, you will see how far I've made it. 


BUT WAIT - THERE'S MORE!

I have also finished editing War Poems, a collection of poetry written by my great-great-grandfather, John H. Callin. You can see one of those poems, The Morgan Raid, on this blog. 

This book contains 77 poems, along with a biography I wrote for this edition, a transcription of his original obituary, and endnotes to help give some historical context to some of his subjects. I also included public domain images from the Library of Congress to illustrate some of the people and places he wrote about.

War Poems comes in at 115 pages and will be available in a hardcover edition only.


 - -- --- -- - 

Details, details...


As I said, I'm waiting for the author's proof copies to come in the mail. Once I get those, I'll be able to make sure the covers look right and none of the images in the poetry book were misprinted, then I will be able to release them both! 

I am self-publishing both books through Lulu.com, and I plan to post the links so you can buy them from Lulu directly. You will be able to find them on other sites, but if you buy through a global distributor, they collect distribution fees - when you buy from Lulu, they give me those fees.

In the case of the Callin Family History, any profits I see will be used to a) pay for my Ancestry membership and b) buy copies to donate to libraries. I plan to send copies to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and to both the Ashland County Genealogical Society and the Wood County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society, to thank them for their research help and for making many of the obituaries that made it into the book available to the public. Families documented in this book lived all over the U.S. and Canada, so if you think a local library would like a copy for their collection, let me know and we'll work out the details.

I expect the War Poems may find a broader audience, and since my aunt Vicki provided the text, I'll be working with her to decide how to handle any proceeds from sales of that book.



Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Weekly Log - 6

Hello, cousins!

 I'm a couple of days late with my Monday post, but what is "time," after all?

Research:

Things have been low-key stressful around here these last few weeks. We put an offer in on a house, and now we're going through the process that leads to Moving In. I hate waiting for events, and Moving In is definitely an Event, so that fuels some anxiety. In the world, I've also been paying attention to a looming possible Russian invasion in Ukraine, and... like I said, I hate waiting. (As of this writing, Mr. Putin has said he plans to back off, but I won't feel relaxed until his troops pull back.)

Researching family history calms me, so that has been the focus of my time. I've been working on three different angles:

1. Rounding out the siblings of my great-grandfather, David Ulysses Clark, on WikiTree. (This also lead me down a slight rabbit hole, as two of his siblings married individuals from the May family, and I felt like I needed to sort out who is who for the day when I come back to David's wife, Vicie, who is descended from the Mays on her mother's side.) Next up on the Sibling Adventure: Howard Ray "Dick" Witter!

2. When I'm not at my desk, updating WikiTree is too hard for my little Chromebook, so during TV time, I've started populating the projects I set up for my wife's four grandparents. They'll eventually start going into WikiTree, too, but for now, I'm just "scouting". (See "Find of the Week" below!)

3. I've also started copy-pasting The Callin Family History biographies into WikiTree, as time permits. This has been a useful exercise in finding last-minute gaps or errors in the text that I can then fix. 

Find of the Week

Immigrants! And a cool family name!

My wife's ancestors are much more recent than mine, for the most part. Her grandma June Shuffler had a maternal grandfather born in Denmark in 1876. June's husband, Bob McCullough, also had recent immigrants on his maternal side: his grandfather, Bernard Blom, was born on 30 Jun 1861 in Angerlo, Zevenaar, Gelderland, Netherlands, and his wife's parents, immigrated from what was then Prussia in the 1850s. 

Her maternal branch appears to originate mostly in Iowa by way of New York (with the exception of her great-grandfather, William Arvid Holmquist, born in Sweden), but they boast one of the more interesting names I've run across, as at least two women in that family were called "Jenevereth". Zelpha Hoot is still my hands-down favorite, but I look forward to learning where "Jenevereth" originated!


Homework

If you're so inclined, I hope you'll take a look at WikiTree.com, and consider at least adding your profile there. If we're related, look me up - Callin-50 - and add me to your "Trusted List" so I can make sure you're connected to the rest of the world tree.

Happy Hunting!

Monday, February 7, 2022

Weekly Log - 1 through 5

Hello, cousins!

One common task that I have never been any good at keeping up on a regular basis is "documenting what I've done". Keeping track of how long I've worked on family history, who I've researched, where I looked - I have never kept track of that anywhere. As a result, I sometimes end up doing the same work over again before I realize I've already looked at a particular database or followed a dead-end trail.

Since I need to start doing that, and I also feel the need to keep you posted on my latest activities, I'm going to try making Monday "Log Day" and post a sort of newsletter every week. Since there were four full weeks in January, plus last week, this inaugural note will cover those first five weeks.

 Research:

For the most part, I've been copying over territory that I've already covered in the past and building WikiTree profiles for my "Great 28" - my grand/great-grand/2nd-great grandparents. My goal here has been to make sure everyone has a full biography with source citations, with the extra step of making sure there is a profile for each of my Grands' siblings.

I started on familiar ground, making sure that my great-grandfather, John Quincy Callin, and his siblings were updated - easy enough, since The Callin Family History already contains fully sourced bios for each of them. The same goes for his father, John Henry Callin; but his mother, Amanda Lydia (Walker) Callin turned out to need a lot more work. (See "Find of the Week(s)" below for more on her.

I spent some time improving the biographies for John Q's wife, Bertha May (Greenlee/Cramer) Callin, and since she only had one half-sibling, I moved on to her parents. 

Find of the Week(s):

1. Amanda Walker's family: on 17 January, I updated the bio for Amanda's mother, Lydia Bowen. I was reasonably sure I had enough information to identify her father and added his existing profile to hers. This opened up a whole new area of future research for me to explore and connects my little branch of the WikiTree World Tree to a very large body of information. I still need to add Amanda's siblings, but I have a plan to follow, so I will get back to that branch in a few weeks.

2. While working on Bertha Greenlee Callin's family, I found Newspapers.com has added some papers from Hancock County, Ohio, and that allowed me to add some color and detail to the bio of her father, Allen Marion Greenlee. (And then I spent far more time than I intended to, adding various Greenlees to the tree!)

3. Because I've neglected the other branches of my ancestry while working on The Callin Family History, I decided to jump over to my maternal grandmother's side and added all twelve of her father's siblings. In the process of doing that, I was able to puzzle my way through a brick wall! For now, I've put my theories together on Josephine (Plumsted) Tuttle page - I expect to work my way back to that page in a few weeks and see where they lead!

4. Moving on to my maternal grandfather's family, I found quite a scandalous story while adding his dad's siblings - in particular his uncle, Samuel Rufus Fraley. Lots of interesting Newspapers.com links there!

Correspondence:

I had two people contact me through Ancestry in January. The first asked about my connection to the late Sandra Kay (Dobson) King (1947-1970). (See this previous post on the Dobson family.) It turns out that Sandra was adopted by the Dobson family, and now I know a bit more about her story.

The second wrote to ask me about some documents I had saved in Ancestry connected to my 3rd cousin, 2x removed, Keith Harlan Kinsey. She had seen a 2018 obituary for her mother among the documents I had saved and asked me to delete it "because it is not accurate information". I suggested that it would be better to correct it so that when other researchers (inevitably) find that obituary again, they are more likely to find the annotated version with the correct information. I haven't heard back from her, but I hope that she didn't think I was arguing with her or being stubborn. I think I can guess what information in the obituary might be upsetting to her, but I really don't know until she tells me. Then I can annotate the obituary and cite her as the source for the corrected information.

Updates:

The Book:

The Callin Family History is almost ready to publish! 

I have been tangling with Word to try to build a Name Index and a Placename Index, and Word is winning. On the bright side, I've learned a few things about building Indexes (Indices) that will help me next time I do something like this. But on the downside, including either Index would put my page count well over the limit of 800 pages. I have a couple more things to try to "slim down" the Name Index, but I think I'm going to end up having to publish without either one.

Other than that, all that is left to wrap up is creating the cover, and making final adjustments to the page numbering and layout. 

The other thing impacting this project is House Hunting. My lovely bride and I are buying a house in San Antonio, and it looks like we'll be moving in about four weeks! Exciting - but time-consuming. Still, I would like to get this book out before I turn 50... this spring.  

Secret Project 1:

I have one more book project I am eager to announce, and it is probably going to be ready about the same time as The Callin Family History. All I am willing to say at this point is that it is a) Civil War-related, and b) written by my great-great-grandfather, John Henry Callin.


Saturday, January 15, 2022

Admin Question: What Do YOU Want?

 For the last several years, this blog has revolved around my work on revising the Callin Family History. That project will (finally, hopefully) be published soon, and I'm thinking about "What's Next?"

Because this blog is such a niche topic, I don't expect it to generate a lot of views, but in a given 90 day period, I do attract about 3,000 sets of eyes, and individual posts tend to have between 6 and 16 views in their first week, suggesting that some of you are regular subscribers.

I've been treating this whole genealogy project of mine as a part-time job, so I typically spend at least 20 hours a week on research, writing, and maintaining the blog and social media platforms. Since I wrapped up the Research Phase of the CFH project, I've spent more of that time putting my research on WikiTree - which you should absolutely visit. Here's a broad sampling of what I've been adding there:

I like doing those pages, and I think they're probably more useful than the two weekly blog posts I've been putting up here, because I'm able to include sources, and other people can edit them directly if I made any mistakes or omissions. 

But, what sort of things would you like to see me do, either here on the blog or on WikiTree? What sort of "content" would keep you coming back, even when I'm not talking about someone directly related to you? Would you like to see more essays that talk about the towns and townships these people lived in? Are you as interested as I am in their personal lives - their religions, their political activities, the music they liked, or what they read (if they could read)?

I'd also like to involve more of you in this. I don't expect you to do a lot of writing for me (though if you want to, I wouldn't be mad!) - but if you are willing to ask public questions or share photos related to family history (either these families or just in general), let me know.

There are also possibilities I've teased a few times - like maybe setting up a Twitch live stream where we can work on research together, or do an "Ask Me Anything" sort of session. I have a few ideas for short videos, but no experience making videos, so if you've thought about doing something like that, we should talk.

Over the next several weeks, I'll be wrapping up The Book, and preparing one or two other projects that I think you'll be excited about. If you think of something, you can comment here, email my "mightieracorns" Gmail address, or drop a note on Facebook or Twitter.